One thing I've been a little surprised by is the idea that, even if the API pricing was reasonable and these apps weren't shutting down, that they wouldn't be heavily and severely impacted by the fact that 3rd party apps will not be able to access NSFW content. Reddit has a LOT of porn on it. Preventing 3rd party apps from accessing that content is a pretty good indicator to me that they're going to completely get rid of that content, eventually. People keep making Digg references, but I'm not sure the real answer won't actually be Tumblr.
The official Reddit app is getting hammered with 1 star play store reviews: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reddit.frontpage&hl=en&gl=US">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reddit.fro...</a><p>I think by now this is totally out of control for them and the damage is only getting worse.
Apollo is shutting down too. I will probably continue to use Reddit, but exclusively on browser where I can block their ads and scripts. The moment they shut down old.reddit then I am gone for good.
17 year reddit member. Went from fark to digg to reddit. I guess its on to the next thing. The APi changes seem to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
I think it's interesting that subreddits and things are shutting down or going dark collectively, but I haven't heard of a concerted effort on the part of users to stage a massive "log out" and "day off" from using Reddit.<p>If a significant chunk of the userbase logged out and didn't use the website for a day or two, that would actually impact the bottom line. So why not organize a "users union"?
I don't use reddit much anymore, the problem is that most interesting communities i know have moved to discord that is a garbage alternative in my eyes.<p>You can't find the best posts for any given time range, you can't discuss one thing at a time, everything just disappears after everyone has paid very little effort to write something because its gone quickly. It's fragmented, low-effort, digital dementia and i hate it.<p>I don't understand the appeal of discord and really hope someone creates an actual alternative to Reddit.
Reddit isn't fun anymore.<p>It's recycled stuff, heavily curated, things stay up a lot longer than they should, you can't even use vote counts to gauge popularity of something, everything even remotely contentious gets manipulated to hell, substantiative discussion gets drowned out by low grade witticisms that aren't even witty, or dumb answers all to get a vote or two, that's if you ever even get a good answer to anything. And that's not even including the corporate problems such as this API thing and deliberate destruction of UX. The site sucks, the only reason anyone uses it is because you need critical mass to move communities. It will happen, and it can't come soon enough.
Seems dumb not to allow premium members to generate keys that could then be put into these apps.<p>Then, Reddit could either get money or the same outcome.<p>Foolish
I only dabble in reverse engineering web apis these days, but wouldn't it be exceedingly possible to write an unofficial API and run an app off of that?<p>It's not pleasant work, but especially with LLM advances, I feel like keeping up with the shifting DOM would for sure be doable, and in fact one of the main reasons Reddit started out with an API: better to provide a path for programmatic access than make the only option outside of your control...
spez is doing an API AMA on the subject tomorrow... <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...</a>
Alternative question: why aren't these apps asking for API keys from their users, and operate off of that?<p>Seems like that'd shift the burden from them to the individual user, who would then pay whatever rates Reddit wants to charge.
Reddit CEO will have AMA tomorrow <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...</a>
Reddit pushes its own app so hard--so obnoxiously hard--that I can't imagine they are terribly concerned about any of this. And, come on. They can charge what they want for their dogs-squeezed-into-guitar-cases library of content. We all can.
Related HN thread on Apollo shutting down has a lot of good discussion : <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435</a>
With all these protests and shutdowns it seems there's a decent chance of reddit dying very soon. It's a shame because adding "site:reddit.com" to my Google queries was the only way to avoid (most of the) SEO bullshit and get opinions by real people.<p>Hopefully it gets replaced soon...
Reddit is my first resort for unbiased product reviews, various kinds of technical advice, book recommendations.<p>They are the gatekeepers for all that. And now they've decided to go full sith.<p>Can we scrape reddit and reproduce it?